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GM Canola Growing Wild in North Dakota
Genetically modified, herbicide-resistant canola has been found growing along roadsides across the state
by Craig Weatherby
As genetically modified (GM) crops become increasingly common, concerns about their potential ecological side effects continue to mount.Affirming the validity of those anxieties, GM canola plants have been found in abundance across North Dakota, far from the farms growing it.The study was authored by researchers from North Dakota State University, the University of Arkansas, the U.S. EPA, and California State University at Fresno.They report that the “escaped”, herbicide-resistant GM canola accounted for 45 percent of the roadside canola plants sampled.GM canola proves persistent in the wildThe GM canola was found to persist from year to year and hybridize with each other to create novel combinations of transgenic traits.The authors argue that their result, more than 10 years after the initial release of genetically engineered canola, “raises questions of whether adequate oversight and monitoring protocols are in place in the U.S. to track the environmental impact of biotech products.” (PLoS ONE 2011)As they wrote, “To date there have been few documented reports of escape leading some researchers to question the environmental risks of biotech products. Our results demonstrate that feral populations [of GM canola] are large and widespread.” (Schafer MG et al. 2011)However, the authors believe that biotechnology can help feed the world’s rapidly growing population: “We must safely engage all tools available to us to advance food, fuel and fiber alternatives as modern agriculture rises to the challenges of the next decade.” (PLoS ONE 2011)The key word there is “safely”, and their own study suggests that safety – in the sense of protecting wild plants from GM genes – will be impossible to achieve.Regular crops also spread unnatural genes aroundIt should be noted that non-GM crops (conventional and organic) contain traits bred into them – which are often found and selected by irradiating seeds or exposing them to synthetic chemicals to create thousands of random genetic mutations – that can also spread to wild plants.As lead researcher Cynthia Sagers said, “More than half of the earth’s terrestrial landscape is managed in cultivated crops or forage species, yet we have little understanding of how domesticated plants influence their wild relatives.” (PLoS ONE 2011)Does it matter that the few “unnatural” genes spread by an escaped GM crop were selected in the lab … instead of being introduced by the conventional technique of creating thousands of random genetic mutations in seeds and breeding the resulting plants that display commercially beneficial changes?Two cliches seem to fit here … the devil’s in the details, and time will tell.Sources
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